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Accessing Instagram, Snapchat on PC, Mac

Marc Saltzman
Published 10:33 a.m. CT Feb. 20, 2017

If you want the mobile Instagram or Snapchat experience on your laptop or desktop PC, download the free BlueStacks Android emulator, which lets you run Google Play apps on your computer.(Photo: Provided photo)

You’re typing away on your computer most of the day — perhaps while at the office or school — and you want to check in on your favorite social network. If it’s a mobile-focused platform like Instagram or Snapchat, however, you’re out of luck.

Or maybe not. There are, in fact, a couple of ways you can access these smartphone-centric social media sites on your Mac or Windows PC.

The following are a couple of ways to pull it off.

Instagram

You can go to the Instagram website (instagram.com), sign in and view photos on your feed. Be forewarned, this is a half-baked experience as you can’t post photos or videos. It’s merely an Instagram viewer.

PC users can download the official Instagram app for free from the Windows Store, but posting and editing photos is only available for tablets and PCs with touchscreens and backward-facing cameras.

Instead, to give you the mobile Instagram experience you know and love, download the free BlueStacks, an Android emulator for PC and Mac, which lets you run Instagram and other Google Play apps on your laptop or desktop. In fact, the Android operating system doesn’t even know it’s being run on a computer.

After you download and install the 300 MB BlueStacks (bluestacks.com), sign in with your Google ID and then click on the Google Play store icon to search for and download Instagram.

Now sign into the Instagram app and you can take a photo or shoot a video with your webcam and post it to your feed. You can also add filters, share multiple photos and videos to your story (and jazz them up with text and drawing tools), see what your friends are sharing, post comments, send disappearing media and words to others (through Instagram Direct), and more.

Snapchat

Unlike Instagram, there is no Snapchat.com viewer that lets you see your feeds, nor is there a Windows 10 app for Snapchat like there is for Instagram. Mac users are also out of luck.

Therefore, you’re limited to using an Android emulator like BlueStacks, or consider another free emulator like AndyOS (andyroid.net), which also works on both Windows and Mac.

After you’ve downloaded and installed an emulator, sign into your Google account, and then click or tap to go to the Google Play store. Search for and download Snapchat, and then sign into your Snapchat account, as you would on an iOS or Android device. You only need to do this once. You’ll be up and running in seconds.

Now that you’re in Snapchat, you can view your friends’ Snaps or send one if you have a webcam on your Mac or Windows PC. Add filters to your photos before sharing, send messages to friends with emojis, click or tap Discover to explore hand-crafted Stories from top publishers in the world, or view Memories, a personal collection of your favorite Snaps and Stories.

If you don’t have a webcam and simply want to see your friends’ Snaps or Stories, click the Cancel button when a pop-up notifies you to connect a camera.

Follow Marc Saltzman on Twitter: @marc_saltzman. Email him at askmarcsaltzman@gmail.com.